E3 2014: NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet Will Exist?

The Tech Report had their screenshot-fu tested today with the brief lifespan of NVIDIA's SHIELD Tablet product page. As you can see, it is fairly empty. We know that it will have at least one bullet point of "Features" and that its name will be "SHIELD Tablet".

Of course, being the first day of E3, it is easy to expect that such a device will be announced in the next couple of days. This is expected to be based on the Tegra K1 with 2GB of RAM and have a 2048x1536 touch display.

It does question what exactly is a "SHIELD", however. Apart from being a first-party device, how would they be any different from other TegraZone devices? We know that Half Life 2 and Portal have been ported to the SHIELD product line, exclusively, and will not be available on other Tegra-powered devices. Now that the SHIELD line is extending to tablets, I wonder how NVIDIA will handle this seemingly two-tier class of products (SHIELD vs Tegra OEM devices). It might even depend on how many design wins they achieve, along with their overall mobile market share.

I'm not convinced there's any mystery here as I don't even think NVIDIA knows what it's doing. I think NVIDIA is just (rightfully) riding the wave of positive K1 news, previews, and reviews. Much like how GeForce Experience gives you access to different features depending on your hardware, it wouldn't surprise me if this SHIELD business becomes a larger ecosystem that does the same for NVIDIA mobile devices. Whether you own a v1.0 SHIELD, K1 SHIELD, K1 tablet, or other K1 Denver device, NVIDIA will be bring content and features to everything as a platform. It seems to be working well for GFE.

Nvidia already has the groundwork done with the shield, why not build a Tablet, just set some object properties to a larger screen size, the APIs should need very little modification, and the tablet reference designs have already been demoed at CES, get a pro graphics tablet line going why you are at it, and give the tablet the ability to stream/utilize a desktop PC's, or server's, discrete Nvidia GPUs for workstation type graphics with your tablets acting as a client/remote desktop, as well as in stand alone tablet mode, and with game streaming.

Hell a whole house run by a Nvidia grid home server, with tablets as the input devices. There you go, run the home on a power8 based server chip with your GPU accelerators on the mezzanine module, and your version of the Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface, NVlink, between the server SOCs I'll bet there could be some 4k, or 8k gaming with that monster. Stick it in a closet in a vat of Novec fluid, with a closed loop heat exchanger to the hot water system in the house, and reuse the waste heat.

OEMs need to get creative, and not just suck up to google/Intel for some contra revenue type of assistance, or the makers of the software bloat, that OEMs are increasingly relying on for revenue on their devices, and do some innovating on their own, Apple sure is not standing still, with their desire to be everywhere in the house. The Device OEMs should have started years ago by banding together and getting a Linux distro running for their entire market of devices, but Google beat them to the punch, M$ is going the Apple way, though a little late and after the fact, so OEMs should not expect Nvidia to be any different than M$ or Apple!

Once OEMs let others take the industry standard OS initiative(android/other), and allowed M$ to whip them into submission under windows, the independent OEMs are responsible for their own demise. The third party OEMs if they would have created a full Linux based shared OS ecosystem among themselves could have been the ones to profit from the app/application ecosystem, instead of Google, or M$, but now they stand to be pushed completely out of the hardware business, or at least be pushed into such a small market segment by the big players, that OEMs are becoming irrelevant. Samsung sure is not going to depend on just Android alone, but Samsung is huge, the little OEMs are operating on borrowed time.

Not many, same goes for the surface tablets, Maybe that can change, but only after they can get their Denver core version of the K1 in some tablets. The 32 bit CPUs are not going to make any sales records in tablets or phones, post Apple A7. Custom ARM chips that can run the ARMv8 ISA will be getting the largest share of new sales, wide order superscalar designs that can execute twice as many instructions per clock than the ARM reference designs. Streaming games to tablets, and tablets that are able to handle gigabit WIFI for game streaming. Most tablets are not there yet, Apple is getting close, the A8 may have the ability to run OSX, full windows on an ARM chip is a log way off. Android only on tablets, is just depressing, the closer a tablet comes to being like a PC/laptop OS wise, and can run a variety of Full OSs not tied to any App ecosystem the better.

I have a shield and I can tell you it's the best investment I made last year for gaming - it really surprised me for what it can do and I used it much more than my main PC now. (Too bad I broke the screen last night, now I will have to wait for a shield 2)
Nvidia surprises me many time last year with the shield, they have been adding lots of feature to it.
Now, nobody really knows it's a full size tablet or like a phone-tablet. I mean, if they can add a cell phone function and if the size is about the same as my note 3, I will buy it right away - even if it costs me like $700, which is about same as what I paid for my note 3 anyway.
Let's wait a few days and see!

Yea it was the best gaming console I purchased last year.
I bought PSV, 3ds large, PS4 and the shield last year, I used the shield the most - Everyday for 2 hours at least.
My PC isnt that bad I'd say : I7, 32 gb ram, 2 x 760TI connected to my 60" Sharp 3D aquos TV. It's not that I dont game on my PC, but I just feel too lazy to turn it on. On my shield however, I can bring it everywhere in my house (Washroom and my bed mostly) and if I am tire, just close the lid will do.
I paid $249 for my shield and not a second regret it. The only thing now is I broke the screen and cant wait for the shield 2......

Shield is surely a funky and innovative piece of Hardware. They should surely build up on that.I personally did not buy the Shield since there was limited content available, but I am surely waiting for the Shield2.

I first found out about the shield around november of last year and I didn't end up buying one till a little over a month ago and I love it. I was wanting to wait till the shield 2 was announced but when I saw on nvision that portal was coming to it and that it was having a price drop... I was to weak of a man to resist and im not regretting it at all. Can't wait to see what exclusive ports that this one will be getting